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Gerard Piqué has teamed up with Ibai Llanos to launch a new business. They have gone from a balloon world cup and telling Twitch battles to setting up a 7-a-side football league. One of those competitions that have been played for years at a municipal, private or federated level on thousands of pitches in Spain.
The width of a football pitch is enough to have two 7-a-side football spaces, although it is becoming increasingly common for specific pitches to be built with their measurements, lines and goals.
The Kings League is a show with which Piqué and Ibai Llanos want to make a splash and earn money thanks to streamers who bring football closer to young people, retired football stars who join the cause and 40-minute matches so as not to bore people.
Casillas, Kun Agüero, Casillas, Capdevila and Chicharito Hernández have been part of the competition since 1 January 2023. A 12-team league with two legs and a play-off at the end to find out the winner of this first adventure.
Apart from the spectacle, the fact that the referees wear a camera on their chest to get a personal view of what is happening on the pitch or that the coaches can choose jokers during the match to alter the course, there is something that is not liked among the remaining lovers of futsal, the big loser if nothing prevents it.
The evolution of football has taken the best of this sport with a few touches of futsal to give enough visibility to an event that can eat the little that the RFEF has left of that Spanish futsal that conquered the world with two stars and several European championships.
Ricardinho, one of the best futsal players of recent times, has announced that he is going to play in the Kings League. Two greats of the sport are waiting for him there. A European champion with Barcelona, coach Marc Carmona, who now coaches Jijantes, and Julio García Mera, World champion with the Spanish futsal team, who will coach 1K FC, the team presided over by Iker Casillas.
It has taken a competition in a sport that has already been invented to put the rest on their guard and warn that the packaging is as important as the inside. Timetables, media, image, rules, innovations... everything adds up to take a minute of audience time away from football and put people's eyes on something else.
ACB basketball is not what it used to be and from there on down, the rest of the sports have a minority impact in Spain. We go back to the impact of the NBA to find the reasons why fans pay more or less attention.
Futsal is bleeding to death and is doomed to be an underground sport. Not being Olympic and the fact that the government has paralysed its conversion into a professional sport will end up burying it. The RFEF does not look after it and its stars have a red carpet to end up in the Kings League if the salary conditions improve.
Piqué has done it again. Play 7-a-side football with retired players and players from other sports, get the spotlight and wait for the future to pass judgement. By the way, there's nothing new about getting retired sportsmen to light up your business. It's what José María García did back in the 70s to get futsal started in Spain with Ufarte, Adelardo and Amancio wearing the Interviú shirt.
